Agents of SHIELD Season 5 Episode 1 and 2: Orientation (Part 1 & 2) Review

Keith NoakesDecember 1, 20175619 min

If you would like to read my review of last season, click here.

Synopsis: Coulson and the team find themselves stranded on a mysterious ship in outer space, and that’s just the beginning of the nightmare to come. (IMDB)

Writers: Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen (Part 1) & DJ Doyle (Part 2)

Directors: Jesse Bochco (Part 1) & David Solomon (Part 2)

Rating: TV-PG

Running Time: 45mins x 2

Last season ended with a cliffhanger showing Coulson in space. How did they get there?

The two-part premiere didn’t waste any time by going back to the moment from last season’s finale where the team was abducted in the dinner by some sort of alien masquerading as a human. The team, minus Fitz, were placed in front of what looked to be a monolith which transported them onto the aforementioned ship.

Groups of members landed on different areas of the ship. Coulson met someone named Virgil (Deniz Akdeniz) who happened to know a lot about him and everyone else. Apparently, he was waiting for them to show up and save him somehow. They were also on a section of the ship full of corpses with their insides drained by mysterious race of aliens who’ve infiltrated that section.

We later see a mysterious man who we later learned is named Deke (Jeff Ward). May watches salvage something from one of the corpses which we later learned was called a metric. Once she thought she was safe, Deke engaged her and they fought with Deke prevailing because of May’s injury. He then put a metric in her arm. The ship they were on appeared antiquated like it was built decades ago which didn’t quite make sense to them. This was because the ship wasn’t run by humans but rather the Kree.

The Kree kept Coulson, Daisy, and Simmons in a cell while they tried to torture Mack and Yo-Yo for information which proved futile. Deke and May joined Coulson, Daisy, and Simmons and managed to talk them out of their cell. The team then split up to save Mack and Yo-Yo, find a spaceship so they can send a signal out to Fitz, and learn what they could from Deke. Each learned the scope of what they were dealing with. The ship was much larger than they had imagined, appearing that the Kree were preparing to invade Earth.

Daisy saved Mack and Yo-Yo, killing a few Kree in the process. May and Simmons found the ship but as they were piloting it, they saw a destroyed Earth. The first part ended with everyone learned that they didn’t travel through space but rather through time, into the distant future.

Virgil had hired Deke to hide them. They were part of a legend shared amongst the people on the ship where they would come from the past to save them. The Kree had tried to suppress the legend but Virgil was the last believer. It was also revealed that a cataclysmic event destroyed the Earth and the Kree saved them. A colony of humans have lived on the ship for generations, working for the Kree. The humans didn’t fight because they needed the Kree to survive. They had the numbers and the weapons.

Coulson found a journal in Virgil’s room while May and Simmons’ attempt to blend in failed when Simmons was taken after trying to save a man who was stabbed after some of the humans fought over food. She ended up on a much nicer level where she was given the opportunity to bathe before meeting the warden named Kasius (Dominic Rains). He was fascinated by Simmons who made up her own backstory to avoid suspicion. Daisy followed Deke to a hidden parlor where people paid to be transported to an Earth-like world similar to the Framework that Deke created.

Coulson made a deal with a man named Grill (Pruitt Taylor Vince) to get metrics installed for him, Mack, and Yo-Yo so he could sacrifice them once the Kree pinned the lowest earning humans against each other. Of course they survived with May saving them. Meanwhile, Kasisus made Simmons into a servant after killing the man she saved and making her partially blind and deaf. Deke told Daisy that she should just surrender.

The last scene was of a ship visitors arriving.

Overall, this was a good premiere that started off slowly as we learned what was going on while featuring some fun one-liners along the way while the second part felt more like a real episode that better established where the season was going while still leaving many questions unanswered, the biggest being where Fitz is. It will be interesting to see where it will go on a new night and if it ends up connecting to any upcoming MCU films. Past seasons have done so but this show has grown to the point where it doesn’t have to so it is definitely refreshing to see them shake things up like this.

Score: 8/10

If you liked this, please read my other reviews here and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, follow me on Instagram, and also like me on Facebook.

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